She was about twenty-five years of age, and resided in a family that had adopted her as their own, her parents being unknown. She possessed a good natural constitution; and was, for the most part, of good habits. If there was any considerable defect of constitution, it consisted in a predominance of the biliary and lymphatic over the nervous and sanguine temperaments. Yet she was not wholly wanting in that susceptibility, not to say activity, which the sanguine temperament is wont to impart. But the same necessity which is so often the mother of invention, is also sometimes the progenitor of a good share of activity; and this was, in a remarkable degree, the lot of Miss Powell. Although her skin was not by any means fair, it was not a bad skin. It was firm in its structure, and very little susceptible of those slight but ever recurring diseased conditions in which persons of a sanguine temperament so often find themselves involved. Such I mean to say was her natural physical condition, when uninfluenced by any considerable practical errors. And yet I had not been many months one of her more intimate acquaintances, ere her face--hitherto so smooth and transparent--became as rough and congested as any drunkard's face ever was, only the eruption was more minute. It was what the common opinion of that region would have called a rash. It came on suddenly, was visible for a short time, and then gradually disappeared, leaving, in some instances, a branny substance, consisting of a desquamation of the cuticle. When the eruption had once fairly disappeared, her skin was as smooth as ever. Then again, however, in a little time, its roughness would return, to an extent which, to young ladies, is usually quite annoying. Young men, in general, are not so much disturbed by a little roughness of the skin, as the young of the other sex. My particular acquaintance with her habits and annoyances continued as many as four or five years. During this period there were several ebbings and flowings of this tide of eruptive disease. My curiosity, towards the end of this period, was so much excited that I sought and obtained of her an opportunity for conversation on the subject. The result was as curious as it was, to me, unexpected. It appeared, in the sequel, that she understood, perfectly well, the whole matter, and held the control of her cutaneous system in her own hands, nearly as much as if she had been a mere piece of mechanism. She had not sought for medical advice, because she knew the true method of cure for her complaints as well as anybody could have told her. In truth, she cured it about once a year, simply by omitting the cause which produced it. This she had found out was butter, salted butter, of course, eaten with her meals. She had somehow discovered that this article of food was the real cause of her disease, and that entire abstemiousness in this particular, would, in a reasonable time, remove it.